y'know considering all the antivaxx and lolbertarian sentiment
This is like the only good thing he's doing. A bit too late, but better than nothing
Honestly, Afghanistan alone makes him better than Clinton, Obama, Bush, Sr., and Trump. The bar is in an absolute abyss but he's been better for sure.
It's honestly hard to pick the worst out of the other four, they're all so fucking bad.
Objectively, you could say Bush. But then Senior fathered him and his war mongering and was the head of the CIA. Obama continued the wars, made them worse, and was the Trojan horse that wrecked the left. Capitalism literally owes Bill Clinton. Trump was only there for 4 years so the amount of damage he did was not as bad but he played a massive part in deteriorating racial tensions as much as people love to deny and was on the brink of causing a war with Iran by killing their third most important figure.
I'd love to take a peek at the timeline where Gore won so I could see what a garbage president he turned out to be
I think there's a solid chance that we at least wouldn't have invaded and occupied Iraq.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Liberation_Act
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_bombing_of_Iraq
Gore 100% would have bombed Iraq. The writing was on the wall even before 9/11
Damn dude a bombing really is the same as a fucking invasion huh?
You people are brain poisoned.
Yes my brain is poisoned because I don't want parents and children dying for bullshit imperialist wars. Fuck you liberal
Not saying he would have been worse than GWB, but he would have been awful in his own way
I am saying that just by not doing Iraq he would have been several orders of magnitude better than Bush.
Yes, obviously, I don't disagree. But was Clinton good because he didn't start any major wars?
Oh yeah, Reagan's a peehole but I didn't want to go too far back.
Jesus I hadn't thought about it, but you're right.
EDIT: that ending the war in Afghanistan on its own makes him the best president in decades, to clarify
The war isn’t over, from what I know. I think they’re just going to have mercenaries / contractors working in there and drone strike from now on
Hey someone had to eat that shit. And this man was ready; no spoon, just hands and an open mouth.
they can just feed him shit like the spoon is an airplane brrrrr here it comes joe joe! brrrr :biden-nibble:
I just realized, the fact that they went through with this probably means that the pandemic is getting really bad, at least bad enough to be entering the cool zone anyway
I'd bet it's part that, part the ongoing damage to the economy. Capital wants this over with. They tried pretending it's over, that didn't work very well, so moving forward with a vaccine mandate is the next sensible step.
Was thinking this too. Specifically, it reminds me of the end of 2020 where orange man wasn't saying if he would accept the election results and one day a bunch of CEO's and republican donors got together in New York and wrote a letter about cutting funding. Pretty much that afternoon Trump came out and said there'd be a peaceful transition.
Found it. When they wanted shit done so that business would run smoothly it happened that afternoon. Might be a coincidence though. Just spitballing.
true power: one CEO of a hedge fund is the top 10 contributor to the Dems, while a former CEO of the same firm is a top 10 contributor to the GOP. (the firm is renaissance capital)
they fund both sides to manage the balance of power.
and then the atlantic council makes policy to protect capital.
The group decided the “business community has a responsibility” to make the case for the transition to proceed.
:jazz-ecstacy:
Capital wants this over with.
I don't think it's that simple, there are contending players in capital that are both, on the one hand, becoming ludicrously wealthy every day that covid persists, and on the other, being bankrupted.
True, although I think there's a firm majority that would rather things go back to business as usual. It's disrupted all businesses, but only some have figured out how to translate that to increased profits.
I don't disagree with you, and I'm totally pulling thoughts out of thin air, but I do wonder who exactly the major contenders are. The desires of Amazon and Bezos probably steeply overwhelm the desires of an unknown number of other entire industries. Amazon and the pharma industry could conceivably be forces deeply invested in the continuity of the pandemic
the major contenders are finance capital and the industries that it is invested in. amazon has reasons to want the pandemic to end, namely that supply chains are seeing major disruptions that are getting worse fast. for instance, they need trucks to deliver goods: most truck parts are made outside the US and cannot be obtained because of covid disruptions. just one example.
i'd say it's probably 80% of capital that wants to end the pandemic through scientific and technological means, and 20% who want to go back to business as usual by ignoring it and letting people just die. capital always uses technology to solve it's crises, which always end up creating new crises.
A little birdy told me supply chains are a fucking disaster right now. As in, people getting sent the wrong shipments, WITH a delay. Getting expired goods, not getting delivieries etc.
I heard rumors on the internet but I've seen it first hand now
The supply chain issues are bigger than Covid. There's supply chain issues because the combo of the pandemic and the massive stimulus payments meant that a lot of people retired early and a lot of mothers left the workforce.
People still have that safety cushion of savings, and they've learned to spend less money on crap, so they aren't in a rush to get back to work. Even if Covid magically disappeared, they wouldn't just go find a job, especially the early retirees. It's only going to get worse because the big end of the Baby Boom is in their late 50s/early 60s right now.
I could see that, but I could see an argument that those big players want this to end, too. They know how to dominate business as usual -- that's how they got so big in the first place. Disruption creates openings for new competition, which they don't want. Look at how many businesses stepped up delivery options by necessity during the pandemic. That's a new, direct challenge to Amazon's own delivery service.
Then there's the fact that businesses that large have an interest in staying off the political radar (and keeping radical political change off the menu in general), and the pandemic fucking so many people over makes that harder.
Then there’s the fact that businesses that large have an interest in staying off the political radar (and keeping radical political change off the menu in general), and the pandemic fucking so many people over makes that harder.
i think this is far more relevant, even for america there's a limit for the "safe" amount of anger that people can have before shit goes sideways
There is zero limit to how far shit can go in America. What action are people going to take? We had literal uprisings around the country last summer, and the result was more funding for cops 😂
How often is the curtain pulled back like this, where ruling class rivalry is exposed so clearly?
I mean you don't have to conjecture https://www.google.com/search?q=covid-19+deaths+us
nah this is good and people will generally be happy about it when the pandemic wanes
Yes, but consider how funny it will be to see a nationwide chud bawlfest on a scale possibly never seen before.
Go make sure your guns are oiled!
This country is on a serious collision course with the vaccine mandate stuff and I’m amazed at how many at best can’t see it and at worst are cheering it on.
This does not end with that dirty unvaccinated minority bending the knee and saying you were right. Just so you know.
https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1436046690549706753?s=19
Genuinely, please bring it on. We don't even have to do anything and a bunch of chuds get shot
The funniest outcome would be the dems retaining a majority because enough chuds get killed
fr people are already goin pretty fuckin nuts over the smallest mandates possible, like masking.
there is a real chance this gets NUCLEAR lol people are in a frenzy over this shit
No matter which side gets shot to death in that fight, it’s a win/win.
Implying it would be chuds shooting feds instead of chuds shooting 27 people at a kroger's because someone mentioned the mandate
This does not end with that dirty unvaccinated minority bending the knee and saying you were right.
They'll never say "you were right," but the vast majority of them are going to quietly get vaccinated and then bitch about it afterwards. Most people don't want to (and can't afford to) lose their job over culture war shit like this. That's a real, material consequence that's going to cut through a lot of pissing and moaning.
I'd say there's even an outside shot that this drives anti-vax loons back into the crank fringes. You can get mass support for that shit when not having the vaccine is a real option for rank-and-file Republicans, but when all but the zealots have gotten vaccinated? It'll be harder to rile up the masses over a moot issue, and they'll want to internally justify getting vaccinated, too.
remember that article about the dhs warning biden about "grievance-based violence"? wonder if uh, anythings gonna happen with that
99.9% of these chuds are pure larp, but that other 0.01%, who knows.
He needs to say employees who beat these chuds asses will be protected and many should include medical bills or something idk. He'll never do something this good.
This is good, but also may unironically lose the Democrats the midterms.
I don’t disagree. The Q energy is going to wipe the midterms. At least 5 more house reps will be as insane as Marjorie Taylor Green.
This is good, but also may unironically lose the Democrats the midterms.
What a fucking DEMENTED country
If we had a zombie outbreak, the chuds would have biting parties to own the libs
Idk. A majority of Americans support a vaccine mandate to employers, and even more support it for high school students. Only around 30% of people are opposed. I guess you could argue that how much it’ll rile up that 30% might outweigh the support of the 60%, but this is a popular move.
A majority support universal medicare and look what keeps happening
Health insurance companies don’t stand to lose money from vaccine mandates
It actually makes them money. When the hospitals are filled with Covid patients, no elective surgery can take place. Hell, sometimes necessary surgery can't take place. This loses insurance companies money. The more people that get vaccinated, the more hospitals can go back to doing other stuff than Covid, the more money insurance companies can make
How do insurance companies make money when people are getting surgeries?
Insurance companies basically work like credit card processors. They take a little cut out of every single transaction, and Obamacare, which they wrote, made it a percentage rather than a flat fee. The bigger the bill the more money they keep/"make".
Capitalism everybody
It’s not about approval it’s about who will be energized to vote. The conspiracy nutters are going to be full strength.
Those are all old farts. Didn't they say something about generation Zyklon or something? I doubt little Timmy in Cascadia is going to let his country fall to Communism™
This might energize libs who would otherwise stay home. Tons of people who've been trying to follow the rules for the last ~18 months are fed up with it, and with chuds who keep pissing and shidding and dragging this thing out. Libs will universally like this.
Also, from a Politics of Spite perspective, plenty of libs will love seeing their conservative coworkers have to
get vaccinatedget owned or fuck up their jobs.Eh, maybe. It seems to me that the political reaction to Covid is all right wing cranks getting freaking out about 1984 and the liberals seem very anemic in comparison, but I would love to be wrong.
True, but if he actually does manage to really end the pandemic I think that might be enough to win. Doubt this is enough to do that though.
We’re just going to keep letting the global south act as a Petri dish to develop new vaccine resistant strains because we need to protect big pharma shareholders and IP precedent, so we’ll see.
Glenn Greenwald was crying about the powers the president has over this earlier today. As if OSHA hasn't existed since the 70s.
Has he ever heard of public universities or the military? Both require at least a dozen vaccines. This ain't new.
I'm sorry but it's my GOD GIVEN RIGHT to re tile my roof while standing on the top rung of an unsteady ladder.
I like the idea of a guy who thinks his wife only calls him an idiot to be OSHA compliant.
Well OSHA ain't gonna care about that as long as you haven't employed anyone. Put the ladder on some short 2x4s to get a little extra height!
He was also gloating that people hating Michael Tracey is the reason he has a girlfriend and getting laid now. That man's brain is a mystery.
Those guys are to the online right what never trumpers are to the Dems. An idealized version of what they want their opponents to be like: they agree with me because the other side has gone so crazy they have no choice! And the original ideology that made them strange bedfellows to begin with just dissolves away and goes unmentioned
Holy shit Biden’s doing a good thing, I honestly thought the day would never come
pulling regular military out of Afghanistan was good, not that there won't still be drones and CIA but
It's wild that this has to be a mandate on employers rather than on individuals. Like the government is incapable of doing anything without getting corporations involved.
Enforcement mechanisms due to neoliberalism have all be outsourced to the private sphere
I think it's to obfuscate questions like "what all can the federal government require individuals to put in their bodies?" It's the type of question that's laughable in practical terms -- think of all the things you already ingest without knowing/consenting, think of all the things you already have to do to function in modern society -- but would be a compelling hook for courts.
I'm pretty sure I previously posted a prediction that the dems would hand off state power to a handful of large corporations, but I think it was in reference to the Texas abortion ban.
I've been posting predictions for a while that state power will be increasingly handed off to states and large cities.
I don't think our predictions are compatible, and I think both are fairly likely to happen, so it's going to some interesting times watching those forces in competition.
Selling fake vaccine cards to chuds and then turning them in for double the profits
#17 A contract is a contract is a contract… but only between Ferengi.
#239 Never be afraid to mislabel a product.
The Donald is saying this is their "Cross the Rubicon" moment lmao.
Also saw a comment chain where someone said they can't afford to lose their job but doesn't want to get the vaccine. Some other chud said "if you have drive and determination you'll be fine" and another replied to that and said "It doesn't work that way for many, there's about to be a bunch of patriots with nothing to lose out in the streets and jobless, they really fucked up with this".
It doesn’t work that way for many, there’s about to be a bunch of patriots with nothing to lose out in the streets and jobless
uh they literally did that themselves
they had a choice for fucking months now
there’s about to be a bunch of patriots with nothing to lose out in the streets and jobless,
I heard Wendy's is going through a labor shortage right now :very-smart:
But each individual franchise is likely it's own business or some shit.
But they don't have to get the vax or lose their job, they can just get a weekly test. Good or bad Biden gave them an easy out.
Less empathy for the homeless and more "they will be our cannon fodder for the civil war".
Based that this is happening, at least.
And it even includes PTO for vaccination!
And it even includes PTO for vaccination!
Damn, that's legitimately good.
They had to do something, the hospitalization rate keeps skyrocketing. There's no ICU beds in central Texas right now, people are already dying of simple conditions and accidents while they wait for a hospital bed, and we're still months away from the winter peak.
The liberals are going to go absolutely apeshit as well though. They think that government mandates should only exist to control the poor , not to tell the good, responsible, degree having citizens what to do.
This should have been done as soon as we hit the point where vaccines were expiring in storage. It's gonna drive the chuds mad, but we're shoving 1800 people a day into the fucking oven. Enough is enough.
I don't think that you can say that with any level of confidence. How can you be sure that those are dying are chuds?
Wasn't there some poll saying people would rather quit than get vaccinated if mandates happen? Let's see what happens in reality.
Also, can supreme court declare it "unconstitutional"? Ik they allowed Texas to ban abortions so i wouldn't put it past them to do that
Regardless im glad Biden atleast did this.
Theyre completely full of it. They will get vaccinated before they give up their bougie life style.
My company implemented this policy a few weeks ago. A couple of people in my department started packing their things. By the end of the morning they changed their mind and didn't do anything about it.
A couple of people in my department started packing their things. By the end of the morning they changed their mind and didn’t do anything about it.
those people are so fucking lame jesus
They're the same people who were ripping off Nike logos from their shoes, buying Keurig machines to break them, and pouring French wine down their toilets in 2003. They only know how to vent their frustrations through childish symbolic gestures.
Sean Hannity did a softball interview with Roy Moore back when Moore was running for Alabama senator in 2017. Moore had been in extremely hot water because he's a pedophile rapist undeserving of being in polite society. A whole lot of people started messaging Keurig over twitter, since Keurig is one of the advertisers on Hannity's show. Keurig then announced maybe a day later that they'd be pulling all advertisements from Fox News.
Chuds got extremely pissed off and started putting up videos of them beating their coffee machines with bats or tossing them into the trash. Yes I'm sure Keurig is very upset that you'll have to buy a new coffee machine, you complete dorks.
Jfc reminds me of when I was 9 and started to pack my stuff in a suitcase, telling folks I was gonna run away. Of course I never followed through.
Americans, especially Texans, are incredibly docile. We're conditioned into accepting anything so long as we're convinced it will be temporary, but even if it's not temporary, we can be convinced only the worst parts are temporary.
At best there will be a few purely symbolic protests that do nothing. There might be one or two lone wolf instances of some libertarian style idiot shooting himself in the foot in a police confrontation.
When the open up protests happened, it seemed like a few wackos. But it ended up being funded by right wing billionaires in an attempt to do Tea Party 2. That was enough to relax curfews and restrictions. We never got a mask mandate, never got a true lockdown. As soon as the thought even crossed someones mind there was a group of chuds at the state capital and one the streets to put up an opposition. Then the media covered it because they think everyone just laughs at these people.
What I'm getting at is don't underestimate them. Democrats cannot really oppose the right. Joe isn't going to send the National Guard to beat down chuds on national TV like the BLM/Floyd protests. Instead they'll either mock them until getting beat by them. Or they'll just symbolically oppose the protests while getting trampled by right wing populism. These are the perfect conditions for figure to emerge and turn this shit into some kind of movement. The money will fall behind it and that's it. A few silly protests we laugh at suddenly become the right wing party.
It has nothing to do with them personally and individually being docile. It's okay to be docile when everything is stacked in your favor. You don't have to be a full on murderous prick to get your way. Just complain enough. In a few years it won't be vaccines vs no vaccines it'll be lynching general practitioners over measles vaccines vs maybe we should just ban vaccines.
In my state they were warning that things would shut down because many thousands of public transit workers were threatening to quit over vaccine mandates, and it didn't happen.
wow small business tyrants are actually gonna riot over this
nah small business tyrants are going to go into the streets regardless of it's impact on them or not lmao
I've never worked anywhere with near 100 coworkers but yeah into the streets my maskless boss will go.
fair enough! but if bidens willing to go after the larger fish, i think theyll assume theyre included in that and react predictably anyway
Probably an avenue to report violations, as you can do with other OSHA violations.
Yeah, I think this will get them on board. I know a lawyer who works with companies on this sort of thing and apparently a lot have been considering a mandate for a while now. They'll use this as an excuse to do it and deflect any pushback on the government.
So republicans, learning from the spamming of the abortion snitch site will have it shut down within a week?
It's possible. But I think a lot of employers are going to be on board with this.